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In 1885, the French Catholic Church celebrated a spectacular propaganda coup. One of its

fiercest critics, the anti-clerical writer Leo Taxile, had at last seen the light and was

eager to tell the world about his conversion. Above all, Taxile was determined to expose

the grotesque and hateful network to which he had belonged since his teens, the diabolical

world of free masonry. The great architect of the mason's Taxile announced was the devil.

Their lodges housed statues of goat-headed beasts. Their rituals involved bestial forms of

carnality and prostitution, last seen in ancient Babylon. The worst masons of all were the

new reformed paladians, led by a devil-wershipping lesbian called sister Sophia Sappho. In public,

Sophia Sappho seemed a gentile spencer. But in private, she would arrive with passion as

she spat on a consecrated host, before forcing a newly initiated sister to have sex with

the sacramental bread stuffed up her vagina. Published in a series of best-selling books,

Taxile's revelations transfixed France. He was invited to an audience with Pope Leo

the 13th, who told him that he had read every word, and then, after 12 years of headlines,

Taxile called a public meeting at the geographical society in Paris and revealed the truth.

So Dominic, as you will well know, that's a review by a top critic of the book The Craft,

how the free masons made the modern world by John Dickie, who is Professor of Italian Studies

at University College London, and that top critic was yourself.

Yes, so that is the ultimate Sunday Times review opening. So that's the kind of thing that

...